Uncanny X-Force #19 Review

The fallout of the Dark Angel Saga.

Now that the Dark Angel Saga is over, Rick Remender has a lot of loose ends to tie up: the mutants from the Age of Apocalypse universe, the kid version of Apocalypse named Evan, and the empty shell of a person that is Angel. He deals with each of these issues in an organic way that not only gives the DAS some closure, but also paves the way for the next chapter in this masterful series.

Immediately, the most noticeable change is that Jerome Opena is absent from art duties and Robbi Rodriguez has stepped up to fill his shoes. Where Opena had a detailed and realistic style, Rodriguez's heavily creative pencils push the character designs to their extreme. Nightcrawler looks like a blue gnome creature while Beast is one hair bow away from being the Cowardly Lion. Here's hoping someone in Oz does not file for copyright infringement. While the new look is jarring, it will not be long before he wins over skeptics with his fully realized settings, highly emotive faces, and excellent comedic timing.

Those who wanted to see Evan join X-Force will be disappointed, but the fate decided for him by Fantomex and Wolverine might prove to be a more interesting destination. Their conversation has an underlying tension that reminds the reader that these two characters do not like each other and are only working together for the betterment of mutant-kind. The character relationships, whether good or bad, have been a true highlight for this series, and here we see the heart-wrenching fallout of Psylocke's actions from when she killed Archangel and wound up with an Angel with no memory.

From the beginning of this series, the characters have been weighed down with hard decisions. They swore themselves to secrecy and pledged to take out the world's most dangerous threats to mutant-kind, and they even contemplated the idea of having to take one another down, if it came to it. Remender brought those ideas to a brilliant crescendo, and now he looks poised to continue this series with the same amount of heart, viscera, and Deadpool toilet humor.